You Let Some Girl Beat You? (8 page)

“You'll finish that, Annie,” my dad would say, frustrated that one of his children was every bit as defiant as he was.

No I won't
. Instead, I'd look up at the framed Vince Lombardi quote that hung on the wall. “Winning Isn't Everything; It's The Only Thing.” I'd fall asleep with my head on the kitchen table rather than give in.

Here again, what some might call a failing, others might call a strength. I'll bet Coach Mosher had her own choice words for it.

What I didn't realize then was the importance of one's attitude, especially in the face of adversity. When would I realize that I couldn't keep blaming others?

Don't Whine, Don't Complain, Don't Make Excuses
. I needed to remember Papa's words now. “In order to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower,” was another Woodenism, and I suppose it was true, regardless who you were following. But while my attitude may have stunk, my game did not. I was playing well and making a name for myself personally. The one hole in my heart was for our team to win one for the school.

Eventually I would help lead the Bruin women to their first and only AIAW Championship, however, it would seem like a long time coming. And it would be under a different coach, a woman who, like me, was rapidly becoming well-known in the world of women's basketball. But first, there would be a stopover for both of us in Montreal.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

In the summer of 1976, the stars aligned. The dream I'd had for so long was finally about to come true, just not the way I'd planned it. Woman's basketball had never been an Olympic sport before, but our neighbors to the north were hosting what would become a historic first. There was only one problem. We took the Gold in the Pan American Games in Mexico, but we finished a disappointing eighth at the 1975 FIBA
¹
World Championships in Columbia, and therefore didn't earn a berth to the 1976 Olympic Games.

As the host country, Canada was guaranteed a berth, as were the Soviet Union, Japan, and Czechoslovakia, the World Championship gold, silver, and bronze medal winners. There were only two more slots open, and I was determined that Team USA would nab one of them. Not only was I certain that we'd earn a berth, I was determined to help ensure we brought home a medal for our country, making us a part of history. But I never kidded myself that it was going to be easy.

The tryouts for the first-ever U.S. Women's Basketball Team to compete in the Olympics were held in four different regions of the country, and everyone and their mothers were invited. It was an open try-out, in keeping with the backbone of our national ethos in the year leading up to the United States Bicentennial.

In truth, the selection of players had largely been pre-ordained. It would be the same women who'd been the USA National Team star players at the World Cup, the Jones Cup, and the Pan Am Games. But the general public didn't realize that. Women from around the country hoped to make the team. They came from every social and economic class, and comprised nearly every ethnicity. Even those who knew they didn't stand a chance came. They wanted to be able to boast one day to their children and grandchildren that they had tried out for the 1976 Olympics.

The road to the Olympic tryouts for the western region was a long one. Nine hours to be exact. My oldest sister, Patty, drove me and Monica Havelka, an AAU teammate and competitor from Long Beach State, up the back route 395 through Lake Tahoe, where tall pines bordered a winding road that wrapped around a huge, crystal-blue natural lake. We stopped several times to settle our stomachs and then fill them. From there, we headed on the I-80 to a gym in Sacramento. It was the summer of 1975 and nearly hot enough to fry an egg on the asphalt. When the car conked out on us, we thought it had overheated. Come to find out, we'd simply run out of gas, thus solidifying the notion that if men refused to ask for directions, women (at least young women) refused to look at gauges.

It was late in the afternoon by the time we got the car filled up and over to the gym. There were nearly 1,000 players trying out across the country, and a quarter of them were here at the regional trials in Sacramento. I signed up, got my number, and rested.

On the second day I found myself playing on the courts with a mixture of women whose athletic abilities ranged from good to don't quit your day job. I was driving in for a lay-up when someone's foot came in underneath me. I went down, twisting my ankle. After bandaging it, I was still unable to play for the rest of the tryouts. The fact that I ended up making the cut anyway angered a lot of women who thought it was unfair that I should be chosen when I didn't complete the tryouts.

“Annie Meyers could beat any one of you hopping around on one foot,” Juliene Simpson told a couple of women who complained to the officials.

By now, Juliene had competed with me in nine international competitions over the last three years, and who knows how many times we'd competed with or against each other in the AAU. She had taken me under her wing from the moment we'd met at the tryouts for the USA team up in Albuquerque, and we'd been roommates at every international event since. Whenever we had a scuffle on the court, we'd always leave it there. Juliene was a great friend, and now—like always—she was sticking up for me when the cat had my tongue.

“Of course Ann is going on to the master trials,” Billie Moore told the Olympic Committee Members. “If I haven't seen enough by now, then we're doing something wrong.”

Like Juliene, Billie knew my game inside and out, coaching against me both at the college and international level. Billie arrived at Cal State Fullerton from Kansas about six years earlier while Patty was in her senior year, and it took Billie no time to bring their women's team to a national championship. Both Patty and Billie had the same no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners style. I was glad that the ABAUSA
²
had picked her as coach of the first-ever Olympic US Women's Basketball Team, along with Sue Gunter as her assistant. We felt good about our leadership.

Twenty-four players emerged from the four regional trials to meet up in Warrensburg, Missouri for the final pre-Olympic tryout. If it had been hot in Sacramento, Warrensburg was a sauna straight from the underworld…hot and humid. Worse, there was no air-conditioning in the gym, so we'd arrive at the gym drenched from just walking from the dorms. And we'd stay that way. But we didn't mind. We were two dozen women literally dripping with hope. The Olympic Committee chose the twelve Olympic contenders—the athletes they thought could play well together and get the job done.

Most of us expected the Olympic team would consist of the same players who'd made up the Pan Am team in '75. After all, the world of basketball was no different than any other. At a certain level, it became an exclusive group who knew each other, their strengths, their weaknesses, where they ranked, and whether or not they had what it took to deliver. The Susan Boyles of the world, those phenoms who burst onto the scene from out of nowhere, were very rare. But we were all surprised when three of the Pan Am team players didn't make the cut. Overjoyed as I was for myself, I felt terrible for the ones who hadn't made it.

Today, not only is it no secret that the Olympic rosters are filled long before the tryouts, but there are no tryouts. You go by invitation, and, of course, your professional status no longer renders you ineligible. In 1976 there were no professional female basketball players, and we were the best of the nation's college and amateur players.

Billie made it clear at the outset that we would have to learn to become chameleons. We may have all been superstars at our schools, but now we would be asked to play interchangeable roles for the good of the team. There would be no star point guard or center, only a well-greased unit with transposable parts, and that unit would have little time to practice functioning as a whole.

The twelve spots went to Juliene Simpson, Pat Head (Summit), Lusia Harris, Nancy Dunkle, Charlotte Lewis, Patricia Roberts, Sue Rojcewicz, Mary Anne O'Connor, Cindy Brogdon, Nancy Lieberman, and Gail Marquis. I was the starting 2 guard. We were women from every part of the country (although Dunkle and I were both from La Habra, which was extremely unusual). Even though women's basketball was still in its infancy, most of us were the emerging stars that world class women's basketball had come to know. Nine of us had played on the '75 Pan Am Team. At twenty-three, Pat Head and Juliene Simpson were the veterans of the team, and our co-captains.

I had played with or against most of these women and knew we had a strong group. Nancy Dunkle, who had been playing for Billie Moore's CSUF Titans, was now 6'2”, and her skyhook was just as pretty as ever. Juliene was still the impenetrable tank as our starting point guard, and Lusia Harris, our starting center, who went on to win three national championships for Delta State, was our anchor.

Also starting was Pat Head. Pat had grown up on a farm in Tennessee, so what might have seemed like hard work to anyone else, was just part of daily chores to her. There's no doubt she was tough. She had hurt her knee when she was on the '75 Pan Am team, but that didn't stop her from playing any more than when she'd broken her jaw playing against the Russians on the '74 National team. There was a grit and determination in Pat that I related to and admired. Whatever challenge Pat was ever going to be faced with in life, she'd meet it head on. There was no losing with her, not to anything. I felt like she, Juliene, and I were cut from the same cloth.

As for my role on the team, Billie let me know that she expected me to lead through my actions on the court and my intensity. She knew I was quiet off the courts, but she'd watched me play long enough to know that I always gave it my all. She also knew she could count on me to do whatever it took to take home a medal, short of armed robbery. But first, we had to earn a berth.

Together with our coach, assistant coach, manager, and athletic trainer, we trained three times a day, seven days a week in Warrensburg, Missouri before heading to Hamilton, Ontario, where we would vie with nine other nations in the qualifiers.

Billie and assistant coach, Sue Gunter from Stephen F. Austin, worked us hard. We would have to do a three-man weave lay-up starting at eight and go down to two without missing under a certain time. There were twelve players, so we had four groups of three. If one group missed a lay-up anywhere in their sets, or it took them too long to finish, every group would have to start all over until we all had completed the drill. Talk about team bonding. We cheered for each other because none of us wanted to have to run again! But with three practices a day, run we did.

The morning and evening sessions ended with a half-hour of what I called Blood and Guts, which were interval sprints from the baseline to the midcourt line, back to the baseline, then to the opposite baseline, and back again. Some call them suicides or lines. Once, a player collapsed head first onto the court, sobbing, and was told to get up, raise her arms above her head, and walk around. The worst thing you could do was not move your body afterward. Blood and Guts didn't just increase physical stamina, it proved you could get beyond the pain. You
had
to get beyond the pain.

Practice games were scheduled with NCAA men's college teams when they were available. Those games not only helped us physically, but they highlighted whatever kinks remained in our playing as a team. During a scrimmage against a Kansas City men's team, the opposing team got the ball on a fast break, and Juliene and I were the only ones back on defense against them, while Dunkle, Harris, and Trish Roberts stood at half court, just watching—a huge no-no, especially since Billie saw it. Pat Head, who had played under Billie at the World University games, warned us that the team would pay. “We'd all better get to bed early tonight ‘cuz tomorrow she's gonna kill us.”

Sure enough, the next day Billie had us spend the first half-hour of practice without a ball. We ran sprints, drills, and everything in between to the point where Blood and Guts was a walk in the park. Her point was to teach us a lesson. Players were running outside to throw up.

But Billie didn't let up. “There's no excuse for what happened yesterday. You're not going to walk down the floor or stand and watch. You'll either decide you want to play every minute, or you'll come sit on the bench near me. I'll go with only nine players if I have to. I'll go with six if there are only six who'll give a hundred percent.”

To really drive the point home,
The Kansas City Times
had quoted her. They'd been covering the scrimmage and were shocked at how she spoke to us. But try as they might, they couldn't find one member of the team who would complain. “We deserved this,” was all they got.

Billie understood the importance of playing defense with the same intensity as playing offense. It would be one of the hallmarks of her coaching style, and something we had very much in common.

With our short practice time in Warrensburg over, we headed to Hamilton and the qualifiers by way of Rochester, New York, which was just across the border from Hamilton, and where Team USA continued to train. It was June, 1976, a beautiful time to be in upstate New York. The dorms, however, were either condemned, or being renovated because not a soul was there. To say they were in poor condition would be like calling the Grand Canyon a ditch. But the price was right—free—and that's all that mattered.

There was no budget for a women's basketball team hoping to qualify for the '76 Olympics. We weren't officially an Olympic team yet, so all the money went to the men's team, which was assured a berth. Our venture was purely speculative in the eyes of the IOC, who probably weren't expecting a lot after our wildly aberrant performance in Columbia. Had it not been for Bill Wall's American Express card, Coach Billie Moore, and manager Jeanne Rowland's wiliness, we never would have made it through.

Bill Wall was the head of the American Basketball Association and he was responsible for both the men's and the women's basketball teams at all international events. Bill probably spent two-hundred nights a year away from home, and he liked to brag that he had racked up over two million air miles, long before United Airlines even started counting, and decades before frequent flier mile discounts ever existed. He'd been to Russia so many times that some people thought he was a secret agent. As manager, Jeanne Rowlands had the distinguished honor of figuring out where we were going to eat every day. There was no per diem…only Bill Wall's credit card with $500.00 left on it, and that would have to pay for everything.

In truth, it didn't matter to us where we stayed or what we ate. Even if we'd had to train in a shack using a hollowed out wastepaper basket as a hoop, it wouldn't have mattered, as long as we could make it to the qualifying tournament. Gail Weldon, our trainer kept us in shape, while assistant coach Sue Gunter was Billie Moore's right arm. We knew that Wall, Moore, Gunter, and Rowlands would see to it that, somehow, we got everything we needed. There was one day, however, when we got far more than we needed.

One day we were treated like queens.